European Modern New Construction Design Outdoor Entertaining
A look at the stunning living spaces surrounding a beautiful backyard at a new construction home in the North Shore of Chicago – including a four-season porch with BBQ and kitchen, a living room with large slab fireplace, a bright breakfast area and a separate backyard retreat with fire pit and hot tub. Hosted by architect Nicole Egan Ducar.
Enjoy our video series of this new construction design-build in progress!
- European Modern New Construction: design direction
- European Modern New Construction: first level design
- European Modern New Construction: kitchen design
- European Modern New Construction: primary bath design
- European Modern New Construction: study design
- European Modern New Construction: powder room design
- European Modern New Construction: front door design
- European Modern New Construction: primary closet design
- European Modern New Construction: stair design
- European Modern New Construction: child bedroom design
- European Modern New Construction: spa level design
- European Modern New Construction: primary bedroom design
- European Modern New Construction: mechanical room design
- European Modern New Construction: lower level design
- European Modern New Construction Design Powder Rooms
- European Modern New Construction Design Living Room
- European Modern New Construction Design Outdoor Entertaining
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Video Transcript
We started out with this gorgeous lot that has a very private backyard, tons of greenery, no houses behind us. So, given the really private nature of this lot, we opted to open all the primary spaces to the backyard. We have a living room in this house that isn’t on the front. When you’re entertaining, you can flow from this sitting space, that’s our living room with a fireplace, it’s connected to our porch which flows out to the terrace, and we tucked in a bathroom that could be accessed off of the back of the house here.
We’ve created this courtyard around all the social spaces. So, you have the breakfast room that connects onto it. We wanted a porch on this house, but we wanted to have it more functional year-round, so we ended up doing the stacking doors so that you could open up two of the panels on two sides. It’s heated, it’s air-conditioned, but it has a full kitchen in it as well. So, when you’re having a larger gathering or a party during the summertime, this will be a great feature and it’ll feel like it’s part of this beautiful backyard.
And then we have a detached structure at the back of the lot that is another destination with a fire pit next to it. You can sit out at the back of this gorgeous lot and look back to the house. So, we had to design the entire structure to nestle in and around some of these great old trees and still meet all of our setbacks, but I think it worked out really well because it really feels like a retreat here in the backyard. When we were laying out the materials on this house, we wanted to break up some of the smaller masses and not have it look like one large white stucco structure. So, we worked hard to introduce stone and some wood type elements to just break it up and give it a little bit more character back here and around the front of the house.